Why cut a lord over spreading seas against affinity when your goal is to race? Are you that afraid of inkmoth nexus or is it so you can try to get islandwalk?

Why is Spellskite brought in against Jund/Junk? In Jund you open yourself up to a needless 2 for 1 with command with the hope of stopping only 4 cards in the whole deck. If you’re using it to chump an abrupt decay or terminate then why not just play another creature instead that can at least swing in? Same argument for junk but they literally have 0 cards that don’t just kill spellskite. How is phantasmal image just not absolutely better in general?

Spreading Seas in against Burn? You have way too much wishful thinking. You’re cutting lords over spreading seas which gives them an incidental target for revelry while in most games is not as much a stone rain as it is cycling for 2. What world do you risk a turn 2 spreading seas over a lord unless you’re absolutely forced to? Harbinger of the tides is one of the best cards you can include for this match-up. Burn decks aren’t simply bolt to the face anymore as they are turn 1 swiftspear/goblin guide/nacatl, turn 2 goblin guide. The tempo swing while putting a creature on board is too huge to pass up.

Against tron I find it strange you cut a reliable lord that can protect you from pyroclasm and double your tempo over a card like Thassa. She can’t swing until turn 4 and does nothing when she lands. Reejery at least protects your field and increases the clock. You’re not going to win a long game against Tron without Tectonic Edge in your sideboard.

WHY ARE YOU CUTTING SPREADING SEAS AGAINST GREEN DECKS THAT RUN NO ISLANDS AND CAN OUTVALUE YOU AND TRADE THEIR KITCHEN FINKS OR REGENERATE THEIR CHUMP BLOCKERS??!!?!?!?

Your primer is good for general information but I find some of your sideboarding questionable.

i think relic is in general very underestimated. I looked at the top 32 of the recent starcity open and there are only 10 decks i would not want relic against. (burn, affinity, tron, mirror). Next to the obvious snpacaster/delve/tarmogoyf/ooze help (almost enough to justify them), they are good against the melira company decks, knight of reliquary, grim lavamancer!, lingering souls and of course every graveyard deck. Additionally they fit the curve quite well.

Tidebinder being a tribal bear is good, granted, but outside of Jund, the decks we are bringing them in against, we need much higher impact answers. I totally can see having it in the board, and for a time was running it myself, but with the board being clogged as it is, I think it’s the first card cut.

Relic is an option in the board, for sure, and again is another card I had in it up till awhile ago, and can see putting back. At the moment, permission seems like the better answer for those sorts of decks as it doubles as a card to bring in against a variety of match ups, where relic may be a tad narrow and low impact.

Thanks for the quick response. Let me offer some counter-arguments to your points on Tidebinder and Relic:

1. Tidebinder is a removal magnet, true, but that’s a good thing – protecting the Lords is paramount (since at the end of the day, they are your win-cons), and having other appealing targets for them to remove is part of how you protect them. Secondly, some of the decks you bring them in against can’t remove them (Elves). They can also be protected from removal with cards like Kira and/or Kite. Hibernation does provide some overlap in terms of function (and they’re plain better against decks like Bogles), but I don’t feel that outweighs the cheaper cost and the fact that you get a tribe-appropriate Bear to go with it.

As far as using Tidebinder vs. Elves goes, timing is key – the likes of Elvish Archdruid and some board states involving Heritage Druid take a turn to get going, so clamping down on it before it gets a chance to make a bunch of mana tends to buy you the time you need. In the case of a board state that got big before you could respond, AEther Vial + Tidebinder reduces the number of attackers you have to account for, and can oftentimes be the difference between them getting in for lethal or not. I’m still all-in on it.

2. I respectfully disagree with Relic not being needed in the current meta – the GP-winning list was running it mainboard for a reason (though I feel that’s a bit extreme). I think it gives you a leg up against the likes of Grixis (very dependent on its graveyard), Jund (somewhat dependent on its graveyard) in the Tier 1 bracket, and it’s huge against decks like Grishoalbrand, Living End, and Storm on the Tier 2 bracket, which are decks that we would otherwise struggle against. Given that the top 10 decks make up less than 60% of the meta according to this site, I think preparing for the unexpected is important in sideboards, and Relic helps us do that.

Yeah zero much better! I sometimes put it on one after a recall to stop galvanic blasts as you mentioned and Signal Pests, but zero is usually the right call.

Thanks!

Tidebinder is good, but just seems very unimpressive at times. Against the removal heavy decks he is usually quickly removed, against burn our creatures are very quickly better so tapping down isnt as relevant, and against elves is usually just a speed bump, as without hard removal the deck can go off very easily. I just think we have higher impact cards to run.

I like her as a one or two of for sure. Switching her on is just a bonus, the irremovable selection she provides against the more removal heavy decks is great, and her ability is relevant.

I was running Relic’s but cut them as the meta really isn’t heavy with the need for it at the moment. Merfolk has a few match ups it almost needs to oversideboard for and sadly they got the axe, but can definitely see them put back in. I

The only big area where my deck diverges is the inclusion of 3 Dismember main. I do think a few pieces of permanent removal (as opposed to bounce) are needed as much as I wish Merfolk could remain free from self-damage. For example, I’m not crazy about having to vapor snag an exarch or pestermite, as it leaves a piece of their combo alive. Same goes for creatures with ETB effects, such as Huntmaster, Rhino, Fiend Hunter, etc. With that said, it’s not pretty to draw all 3 of them during the course of a game (though I’ve played and won several games taking 12 damage from my own Dismembers).

I also really like 3-4 Tidebinders in the side, as so much of the field runs red or green creatures, including some of your worst match ups.

One fun trick with Aether Vial: if you’ve got nothing to vial in, it can still pay off to tap vial when your opponent has a lot of untapped mana sources just to force them into a response (assuming you want to provoke a response). A lot of people want to get the jump on an additional lord, a spellskite, a cursecatcher, or a Kira, so you can sometimes get them to commit to suboptimal plays that way (such as using removal on a lord that could have been used on the Master of Waves you’re about to play).

1. I’m in on the 4 Hurkyl’s Recall and the 2 Chalice of the Void, but I think Tidebinder is also a critical part of the board. I find him handy against BGx (Harbinger is meh at best against the likes of Bob, Siege Rhino, and Huntmaster of the Fells), Elves (Master of Waves doesn’t do diddly here), and sometimes even Burn (tapping down Guide and Swiftspear > bouncing them. Even if you choose not to include them, I think they deserve a bit more discussion.

2. How has Thassa performed for you? I never found the room for her, and many people who did ended up taking her out of the 75. I know you included her as a nod to removal-heavy decks, but I would posit that she’s not very useful there, since it’ll be harder to switch her on without other guys on the table, and a CMC3 enchantment that lets you scry and make creatures unblockable is kind of expensive in Merfolk.

3. Where’s your graveyard hate? I think something like Relic of Progenitus is pretty important, and I think it outperforms Grafdigger’s Cage thanks to its ability to be cycled. It also stuffs Delve creatures (not that we have a whole lot of trouble with those, but still).